Trump is losing big with young voters, unlike Europe's right-wingers

Whatever Donald Trump's political magic is, it does not seem to be working as well on the young. A new poll shows Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton battering her Republican foe among younger voters by a margin of 56 percent to 20 percent.

The USA Today poll shows that Trump's appeal among younger voters is even weaker than Richard Nixon's was during the height of protests against the Vietnam War in 1972, when just 32 percent of 18-29 year olds supported the incumbent Republican.

The poll is the second blow to Trump's cred with the youth in the past week. A poll by Marist showed Trump coming in fourth among voters under 30, trailing even Independent candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

These numbers are bad for Trump, but they could be even worse for Republicans in the long term. For the first time since the '50s, Democrats are poised to win double-digit victories among young voters for the third presidential election in a row.

Many comparisons have been made between the mogul and right-wing populists such as France's Marine Le Pen and the crew leading Germany's nationalist AfD Party, but Trump's lousy numbers among youngsters set him apart from his counterparts across the Atlantic.

Le Pen's National Front Party recently won the largest share of 18-30s in last year's round of elections, while the AfD enjoys the second-youngest party membership in Germany.

As Fusion reported earlier this year, there is nothing inherently liberal about younger voting blocs, and any success of Trump's message in the US would suggest the country is headed in a similar direction to its European allies.

But even with surveys indicating "soft" racism among millennials, America's youth appears to be embracing the social democratic tones of Clinton's onetime challenger for the Democratic nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, rather than Trump's nationalism — at least for now.

Follow Brendan James on Twitter: @deep_beige